Genres
Novel of manners
Fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with detailed observation the customs, values and mores of a stratified society.
The novel of manners is a work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with detailed observation the complex of customs, values and mores of a stratified society. Its scope can be particular, as with Jane Austen's treatment of the domestic affairs of England's landed gentry, or general, as with Balzac's portraits of 19th-century French life. Behavioral conventions dominate the plot, and characters are judged by how well they meet the standard of ideal conduct; Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence are the canonical shelf, with satire as the recurring instrument.
For novel and web-serial writers the genre is literary fiction running on observation instead of action, and its living commercial descendant is Regency romance, which Georgette Heyer built in the novel-of-manners tradition.